


Semi-gloss Finish

by saltslimes



Series: Guide to Paint Finishes [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Tfw ur friends forget about you, and you get shot about it, the usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 00:53:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15852912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Semi-gloss finish: not as shiny as high-gloss, good for doors, trims, and cabinets.





	Semi-gloss Finish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaciart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaciart/gifts).



> This fic is more written _with_ Kaciart than _for_ her, cuz the plot is all her. Things got a little wild in the stream and I couldn’t resist.

Ignis wouldn’t have called his respect for Prompto begrudging, but that’s because the longer you’re friends with someone, no matter what, even if only mentally, you start to pull your punches. Prompto always felt a little like water to the rest of the party’s oil, at least how Ignis observed it.

It wasn’t… his… it wasn’t one thing. It was everything. The way he talked, the way he fought, the way he _was_. And Ignis didn’t dislike the man by any means. But he felt that the gifts he and the rest of their party had been naturally graced with were somehow antithetical to Prompto’s very nature. Where Ignis was observant, he was bewildered. Where Gladio was stubborn and headstrong he was plying and accommodating. Where Noctis was high born, he was common. Not that that was everything. Not that it was anything, necessarily. But it went unspoken between them. Sometimes it went spoken. It was always there, nonetheless.

[XV]

When he was fifteen, or some age around it, Prompto had the same dream for a month straight. It wasn’t particularly interesting. By the seventh or eighth time he hesitated to even call it a nightmare, even if he still woke up drenched in sweat. Even if it made him imagine sinking into the mattress until he was fully incorporated with it; and the foam was in his lungs, and he existed only as a skeleton inside the bed.

In the dream he was a ghost. He was crossing the empty street back up to his home, and his parents were on the front steps engaged in quiet conversation. They had their suitcases with them. His father was holding a lidded cup of coffee. His mother was laughing at something.

And he’d drift up to them, wave to them, shout to them. After long enough, they’d take the bags to the end of the driveway and get in a cab and leave. And the dream never ended there. Prompto would drift through the empty house, taking note of the particular silences. The softest drip of the bath faucet. The lightest rattle of the window screens.

When Prompto was fifteen, if he woke up screaming, it was never a problem, because no one ever heard.

But after enough time the bed in his room—the foam slab like a coffin insert—invoked in him a kind of revulsion he could never describe or put a name to. The empty house really felt like a tomb, and when he lay on that mattress he really felt dead, and it was like ants were crawling all over him, it was like his bones would rot to liquid.

[XV]

The clouds above couldn’t be called threatening rain, but perhaps implying it. Prompto squared up a shot and fired, and sparks graced the sky. That spatter of fast-evaporating black blood changing to smoke as it met the sun, like oxidation in hyper-speed, Prompto never got used to it. He couldn’t get used to daemons. They were a black hole to him. When he tried to look he got sucked in. When he tried not to think about them, his mind rubbed over the hole like a missing tooth.

Across the field, Gladio smashed apart the body of an MT axeman. Prompto half-grinned. Gladio turned. And his eyebrows pulled down, and he leaned in like he wanted to move but knew there was no time to cross the distance.

“Noct! _Look out_!” The shout echoed across the rocks behind them and back. Noctis was between Prompto and Gladio. Prompto was looking at the back of his head.

He searched for the threat Gladio had spotted, and before his eyes could land Noct said, “huh?” shifted in the dirt, and then warped away.

“Wha?” Prompto got out, and then an impact like a punch to the chest hit him, and he stumbled back.

“Some help over here!” Ignis called, and when he straightened up he could see the shot, nice and clean, so he aimed, and he fired, and sparks hit the sky again.

And in another half a minute it was over.

“Nice one at the end there. Didn’t think you had the guts,” Gladio said, slapping Noctis on the shoulder. Ignis stepped past Prompto to get a look at the prince, and at the sluggishly bleeding cut on Gladio’s arm.

Prompto took a step and glanced down as he dropped his gun back into the armiger. Oh. Odd.

“My shirt has a hole in it,” he said. Right in the middle of the chest. Round, a perfect tear in the red fabric. He frowned. There was a sound in the distance. Not another drop ship, hopefully. Thunder rolling somewhere not all that close. The clouds were moving--faster than they’d been before, he thought. But maybe not.

He pressed his hand to the hole--it definitely wasn’t there before. He’d have noticed. He’d have noticed when he put his shirt on. But the world was… slow suddenly. Softer suddenly.

“Don’t bother with a potion, this is nothing,” he heard Gladio say. His voice was under water. “We’re already low.”

There was blood drying on Prompto’s fingers. He tried to draw a breath but the air had become thick like syrup. The world had become like molasses. He tried to take a step.

“It’s not nothing, it’s bleeding. Here, let me.” There was the shape of Ignis, breaking a vial against Gladio’s arm. There was Noctis, scrolling through his phone for something. Gladio watching the clouds for some further sign of rain.

And Prompto was a ghost, for a moment. He was drifting in the silent not-silent world. For a moment, a terrible moment, it was the dream. He was fifteen in the empty house. But he could taste copper in his mouth.

He stifled a cough. Copper drying on his lips. His knees hit the ground. Everything in his chest was slush. And the world outside too, it was soft like the dream, and it was empty, and it was revolting.

[XV]

Ignis turned at the soft sound behind him--flesh on flesh on dirt. Prompto was on his knees but as Ignis took a step back towards him he dropped back onto his butt. He looked stunned. His eyes were hollow. Ignis put a hand on his shoulder.

“Where are you hurt Prompto?” He didn’t get an immediate response. But he got information. There was blood on his lips, smeared across his chin. There was blood leaking from his nose. Prompto listed forward; locks of hair falling against his cheek.

“What’s up?” Gladio called. He and Noctis were a good twenty feet ahead--but they’d finally noticed two missing party members and turned around. Prompto’s arms were trembling. His whole body was trembling, Ignis realized. There was darker red gleaming on the front of his shirt, camouflaged by the color of the fabric. He took hold of Prompto’s arm to keep him from falling backward and tugged up his shirt, exposing a river of blood.

It seemed to stem from just below his sternum but the fabric had carried it up and out like a pool of plasma under a bandage, like spilt coffee soaking into a paper towel.

“What--Prom!” The smell of magic burnt the air as Noctis warped back to them. Prompto coughed weakly, and some mixture of blood and mucus and saliva dripped from his mouth and nose. The next breath he took in was high pitched-wheezing.

“Did he get _shot_?" Gladio said. Ignis held a hand out.

“Elixir please.” When a second passed and nothing was deposited in his hand he turned to look up into the face of Noctis; horrified. “Noctis,” he tempered his voice, “I need an elixir now.”

“We’re out.”

“Potion then.” Ignis snapped his fingers. Or he tried to, anyways. They were wet. They made a soft pop. Noctis fumbled with the armiger, dropping a mug and a roll of toilet paper into the dirt. Finally he handed over their one potion. Their last potion after Ignis used one on Gladio (who he absently observed looked vaguely sick).

“I didn’t even see him,” Gladio said weakly. Noct’s head snapped up.

“When you called out for me? Did I--”

Ignis laid Prompto back as gently as possible. His lips were tinged with blue. His face was chalk-white. Gladio’s hand landed heavily on Noctis’ shoulder.

“Even if you did, it was his duty. He signed up for this. We all knew the risk we were taking.”

Ignis was too busy uncapping the potion to see Noctis cup a hand over his mouth like he was going to be sick. He upended the potion over Prompto’s chest, and then shook the last drops from it for good measure. It wasn’t even enough to knit the skin back together, but the wounds shrank in size, and the blood clotted faster, thick scabs only magic can make soldered the holes in Prompto’s chest shut.

Ignis leaned in close to hear him take a breath. Not a full breath, not a breath without pain (gods, he was still conscious), but more of a breath. Noctis handed him the roll of bandages without having to be asked, and he worked as quickly and as gently as possible.

“We’ve got to move, now. Gladio, if you please?” He gestured to Prompto’s limp form.

“Yeah, of course.”

With help from Ignis, Gladio scraped Prompto up from the ground and carried him to the car. Prompto clung to him weakly. Ignis strode out ahead of them, but he heard Noctis, in a voice that had tears not in it, but certainly around it, swear softly.

“Gladio the next time you say something like that in front of me I’m going to deck you. Even if it breaks my hand.”

“It’s battle, Noct. People get hurt.”

“You can’t be expected to see everything at once,” Ignis said, without turning around. They were close enough to see the car, and the road at the base of the slope as they crested the hill. “None of us can.”

But unsaid between them was the fact that if it had been Noctis who was hit, Prompto probably would have taken the blame. He would have shouldered it whether he was given it or not. And Noctis would have had both potions. Noctis would be sitting up on his own by now. It wasn’t everything. It was something, undeniably.

And with each step Ignis thought about the precious milliliters Prompto lost while Ignis was evaluating the value of a potion vs Gladio’s injury. Where he was thinking about how he’d mend a slight tear in Noct’s trousers. What’s a natural gift? He could call himself observant, but a man he called his friend bled into his chest while he hadn’t even thought to turn around.

They rode in half silence to the nearest hospital, Noctis alternating between navigating and twisting in his seat to look back at Prompto. Ignis checked in the rearview mirror periodically. Gladio had an arm lightly looped around Prompto’s chest to keep him from jostling around.

Ignis made eye contact with Gladio once, stopped at an intersection. His look was pointed. His eyes darted down towards Prompto. Ignis waited for the car to his left to cross, and then ran the red.

[XV]

Each time the car stopped Prompto would jerk a little forward, and Gladio had to pull him back as gently as possible. When he kept his hand still against his chest he could _feel_ a judder in Prompto’s ribs--blood leaking into his chest cavity.

They’d been eating around the empty fire pit, white ash shifting with the light breeze, and he and Ignis were tag-teaming a lecture about working as a team (after Prompto backed into Noctis on yesterday’s hunt). Prompto’d kept his eyes fixed on his boots, but when Gladio snapped his fingers, asked if he was even listening, he popped up with that 1000 watt smile.

“I gotcha Gladdy. Know where everyone is at all times,” he’d said.

Gladio didn’t even _see_ him. No, he saw him, but he didn’t think. Noct warped away and he went back to his target.

“We close?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level. Casual. Just a normal question not to alarm anyone. Prompto was still awake, gazing listlessly at the seat in front of him. Noctis twisted around in his seat but Ignis grabbed his arm.

“I need to know where the turn is.” His tone was harsher, almost more than Gladio could remember hearing it.

Luckily gunshot wounds get you through triage quickly. Unluckily, they get you into surgery. So the three of them were relegated to a waiting room where Noctis paced four laps, kicked a plastic chair and was taken into the hall by Ignis for either a talking-to, a hug, or some combination of the two. Gladio folded his arms over his chest and fixed his eyes on the dusty surface of the fake flowers firmly potted in the corner of the room. He kept them there until someone came to tell them Prompto was alive.

They got to go see him about a half hour later. Everything moves at the speed of sand in hospitals. Prompto was finally unconscious. He’d been awake when they took him away. Gladio’d thought--however unconsciously--that it would be easier seeing him like this. It wasn’t.

Noctis pulled up the only chair to right beside the bed and sat down heavily. He leaned over the railing of the bed and picked up Prompto’s limp hand. Gladio hung back in the doorway, and Ignis, who had crossed to the bed with Noctis, drifted back to stand with him.

He was almost as pale as the sheets under him. Even battle-worn and unconscious, his hair was still firmly spiked up. Gladio had always thought it was as much gel as Noctis, but he pondered suddenly if Prompto just had a royally fucked-up cowlick. Shit. That was the guy who took two bullets intended for the prince and didn’t even say anything. And he looked like a kid in the bed. Gladio had to step into the hallway. He forced himself to take three long breaths. Ignis leaned out of the doorway.

“Everything all right out here?”

“Yup.”

“Hmm.”

“I’ll stand by what I said. I don’t have to like it.” Gladio glared at the pockmarked linoleum.

“None of us have to like it,” Ignis said softly. “I’m going to go find some coffee.”

“Okay.” Gladio re-stationed himself in the doorway, watched as Noct--with incredible care--pressed Prompto’s hand against his cheek and held it there. So he fixed his posture from the top down--head, shoulders, straighten the spine. And then he stood boot camp perfect and watched nurses and patients drift through the halls.

[XV]

When you have a dream a hundred times you stop screaming. When you have a dream two hundred times, you stop waking up in a pool of your own sweat.

Prompto cracked one eye open and found the ceiling half-liquid, the world half sunken as he scrabbled against the medication to cling to the edges of consciousness. All of him was cold except his right hand, which was warm, and just slightly sticky. It was pressed against Noct’s sleeping face. He’d been drooled on not recently, but at some point.

And that incredible loneliness closed in on him, it pinned him to the mattress like a butterfly to a corkboard. For a moment, he was a ghost on the bed, and the hospital a silent tomb, and the world outside only a broken promise, a thing he could never wake up to.

He pulled his hand back towards himself without really thinking about it. Noctis jerked awake. Their eyes met in the dim light. Noct didn’t say anything, but he leaned in closer. Prompto didn’t really feel anything. But tears welled up and spilled over onto his cheeks anyways. And Noctis stood up so he could lean up over the railing and press his lips to the space where Prompto’s lashes brushed his cheek.

Shaking fingers found the front of Noctis’ shirt. There was blood under his nails. There was dirt under his nails, and his chest felt like a gaping absence, but Noctis was there, breathing, and alive, and _seeing_ him.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he heard Noctis mumble. He opened his mouth to say something back, but he reached and there was nothing. So he just clung onto the front of Noct’s shirt and hoped it wouldn’t annoy him, and after enough time, Noctis got the hint and came around the other side and climbed into the bed with him.

He laced their fingers together, careful of Prompto’s IV. Sound rolled back in. He was awake. He was solid.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Original doc title: gfdi kaci
> 
> Thanks 2 G9 for nighttime beta
> 
> Come hang on [tumblr](https://saltslimes.tumblr.com/)


End file.
